The hardened-images space gets better when more people are working on the problem, and Minimus has been a valuable part of that work. That changed this week, when they announced they are ending operations. Though we were competitors, we both believed strongly in the importance of reducing vulnerabilities at the foundation of the software supply chain. Their efforts to bring needed awareness to this challenge will be missed, and our thoughts go out to Minimus employees who are impacted by this decision.

While the human side of this story deserves the most attention, there’s also a practical side: if you’re a customer running Minimus images in production, you’re now facing a migration you didn’t plan for. Their notice commits to a 60-day maintenance window, with images receiving upstream updates until the registry goes offline on October 22, 2026. Images already pulled will keep running after that date, but no further updates will ship to them, and any new CVE stays unpatched from that point on.

If you need a hand, Docker is offering free migration assistance to Minimus customers. Write to minimus@docker.com to walk through your specific image list, your compliance requirements, or questions around your migration plans, and a technical migration expert will get back to you. You don’t need a sales call to start migrating to DHI today.

Docker’s free, open source catalog is available to everyone under Apache 2.0, allows production use, and has no user caps. The migration is about as easy as these things get, a drop-in with minimal workflow changes. It’s more of a swap than a rebuild. It’s easy to find your images’ equivalents in the DHI catalog, and for most of your services, the whole change is updating the FROM line. Use the migration guide for the step-by-step process and the checklist to track each image through the swap and verification. The worked examples show full migrations end to end, and Gordon, Docker’s AI assistant, runs the first pass with you.

Whether you decide to migrate to Docker or somewhere else, we recommend you start that process now, while the maintenance window keeps your current images patched. You can browse the full DHI catalog on Docker Hub, make the first swap, and, of course, reach out to us if you need help.

Docker Hardened Images

Docker Hardened Images are minimal, hardened images built from source and continuously maintained by Docker. The catalog covers 4,000+ images, compatible with Alpine and Debian, so your Dockerfiles and CI keep working as they are. Every image ships near-zero CVEs with full, unsuppressed CVE visibility, and each carries a complete SBOM, SLSA Build Level 3 provenance, and cryptographic signatures. Docker manages the full lifecycle of your image, and teams moving from standard public images see up to 95% CVE reduction and up to 90% attack-surface reduction. Paid tiers add SLA-backed remediation, FIPS and STIG variants, customizations, and up to five years of coverage for versions past end of life.

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